Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.

You know how it begins.
You wander into your office one day, your staff seem to be wafting around as if someone’s slipped Diazepam into the water-cooler and you think you must do something about it.
You don’t have a clue what to do. You’re too busy thinking about the value of your stock or the strange evening you just spent with a couple of salespeople from Wichita, Kansas.
So you go to the one person who always knows — your HR director. She says: “We need a morale-boosting exercise.”
The descent is now complete.
Soon, the staff will get a memo entitled: “Morale-Boosting Day Out.” Before they know it, before they can get out of it, they’re transported to some national park, rugged wilderness or former drug rehabilitation clinic for a day of soul-baring and soul-sharing.
Please beware the limits of these things. Just this week, the United States Military Academy at West Point held its annual spirit-raising morale booster: a pillow fight.
There’s nothing that says more clearly that you are a little more grown up, a little readier to face the troubled world and its issues than to grab a pillow and bash someone else over the head with it. Especially if you happen to be a soldier.
As the New York Times reports, the September 2015 West Point Pillow Fight got out of hand.
30 cadets ended up needing medical treatment. 24 of them had concussions. There were broken limbs and ribs. There was at least one dislocated shoulder. Yes, this was even worse than any given Sunday in the NFL.
Cadets had shoved weapons and other firm objects inside the pillow cases, because presumably this is an effective fighting tactic when your boots are on foreign ground.
You’ll immediately mutter that your own morale-boosting days never involve injuries — unless they’re caused by excesses of tequila. Please reconsider.
The biggest problem with morale-boosting events is that everyone knows they’re supposed to be having their morale boosted. Immediately, then, their psyches are primed for a peculiar sort of battle.
You want to be ra-ra because you’re supposed to be. However, this might also be your one chance to show those in high-up places that you’re a very fine battler yourself.
Metaphorically, you put (psychological) weapons inside the pillow case of your soft, lovely personality. You play team-bonding games (you have to adore the psyche of those who invented these things) while at the same time showing your mettle consists of metal.
This is all especially dangerous when your morale-boosting day involves Paintball.
Rarely has there been a creation that more openly exposes the essential dark ruthlessness that’s buried within humans.
Those who might seem meek, mild and even pot-addled suddenly display a fervor for the kill that would frighten an untamed Rottweiler.
Worse, the machinatory instincts that can unfold might be disturbing in the extreme.
This raw expression of human innards isn’t just confined to aggressive activities such as Paintball.
You can even see them if your morale-boosting day is a company picnic. Once the ouzo-in-a-box begins to flow, the inhibitions that are essential for a smooth-running office are cast aside like underwear at an orgy.
You’ll see camps forming, alliances being broken and new alliance being created.
Someone will come out bloodied. Someone will emerge with their preconceptions disabused and their corporate status suddenly at risk.
These psychological concussions can take weeks to heal.
So if you want to avoid dislocated egos, broken hopes, fractured expectations and a whole heap of new injuries for you (or, rather, your brilliant HR director) to deal with, then think carefully about how to boost morale.
Stick to parties and concert tickets. Stick to simple events that allow people to be whoever they feel like being without knowing that they’re there because their morale level has been deemed low.
And the best way to boost morale? Just manage people well, so that they never lose their morale in the first place.